Caught Dead

by Andrew Lanh

  Everyone smiled. Grandma touched him on the shoulder lightly, affectionately, and he looked at her. “Am I talking like a Buddhist, Grandma?”

  “No.” She tapped his shoulder. “You’re just talking like someone who is looking for answers where others say there can be no answers.”

  “And there are always answers?” Hank asked.

  “If there’s a question,” I said, “there has to be an answer.”

  Grandma nodded at me. It was a blessing from her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hank told me that Jon Torcelli was an intern at a law office in Hartford, and took his lunch precisely at twelve-thirty every day at the Capital Grille. How Hank knew this I don’t know, but as I walked into the packed, noisy cafeteria, I spotted Jon sitting by himself, head bent over a tray, a cell phone gripped in one hand. A paperback lay on the table.

  “Jon.” I startled him. He looked up.

  “Oh my, the detective himself.” He spoke in a deadpan voice, low and raspy. “I saw you watching me at Mom’s funeral yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry about your mother.” He nodded and bit his lower lip. He finished texting and pressed Send. I shook his hand. “I didn’t want to bother you at the funeral or luncheon afterwards.”

  “So you bother me now.”

  “If I can.”

  “Well, why not?” He pointed. “Sit down.”

  “Your father is really taking this hard.”

  “Right now he’s pissed because I returned to work the day after the funeral. Do you know what it’s like to stay in that house with him?”

  “He’s suffering.”

  “My father used to tell us that only two things were important in his life—his vast money and his beautiful wife. Of course, he always forgot to mention his two adorable children.”

  “He was probably working some old joke.”

  “He is the old joke.”

  “That’s kind of harsh.”

  A burst of thunder made him jump, and he glanced out the window. The long stretch of hot days had ended with steady rain showers. The huge plate-glass windows glistened with runny streaks. But the heat would return, despite the crackle of distant thunder and the spitfire lighting. Jon looked annoyed at the weather. He nibbled on his tuna-on-toast, chewing silently, his eyes on me.

  “Well, I’m sorry.”

  “No, I don’t think you are,” I said.

  He tucked his tongue into the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m a little confused. You may have heard that some asshole murdered my mother. It hasn’t put me in the best frame of mind.”

  “I’d like to talk about your mother.”

  He rolled his tongue into his cheek. “Oh, yes, the detective at work. I understand this is a pro bono endeavor of yours—for the love of the Vietnamese community.”

  “Which you’re not happy to be a part of.”

  He looked surprised. “I’m not a part of it, Rick Van Lam, in case you haven’t noticed. I live in a world where I can look out my bedroom window and see nothing but trees. And I can while away my life at Yale. You know you can stay there forever if you’re rich.”

  “But you’re half-Vietnamese.”

  “Like you.” His tone was sharp. “Yes, living my life as a half-gook.”

  “I hate that word.”

  “Gook? Why it’s a lovely American invention for us, don’t you think? They’d already milked chink to death. Ah, being Vietnamese in good old America.”

  “But I don’t mind it as much as you do.”

  He flinched. “It doesn’t make my life easy.”

  “That’s bullshit. You’ve had an easy life.”

  “Look at me.”

  I did: a tall, lanky man, with a creamy-toned oval face, eyes slanted as my own, but the beard stubble of a white father. His father’s hazel eyes. A good-looking man, he looked like his dead mother, the face a little too soft, almost feminine. “You inherited your mother’s good looks.”

  “Yes, and if you don’t think that isn’t a curse, you’re a fool.”

  “How so?”

  “Dad didn’t want a son who looks Asian. The man’s a bigot. I turned out to be pretty like Mom, not the he-boy he’d like to toss footballs to or wrestle to the ground—or bring to his cigar-smoking poker games. He wanted a son who looked like him. Swagger and spit and hairy chest.”

  “So that’s why you don’t like him?”

  “One of the reasons. How much time have you got?” he snickered. “Mom used to quote a hideous Vietnamese saying when I bad-mouthed Dad. An qua nho ke trong cay.” I looked confused. He translated, “When eating the fruit, don’t forget the man who planted the tree. So I was supposed to worship Dad.”

  “What about your sister?”

  He snickered. “That’s another scream, Rick Van Lam. Kristen takes after him. How ironic life can be. God does like his games, no? Sometimes people don’t even see the Asian blood in her. She looks like Dad’s younger cousin. See what I mean? Nature fucked things up. She was supposed to be a kewpie-doll replica of Mom, another Vietnamese princess, all frills and perfume and lipstick and silk dresses slit up the side like Anna May Wong in one of those black-and-white late night movies my Dad loves. But no, I’m the son who looks like a chorus boy from Flower Drum Song.”

  I smiled. “You seem to have assimilated all the cultural references.”

  “You note I leave out Miss Saigon—too close to home.”

  “For both of us.”

  “I’m bui doi, like you, but Dad forbids us to use that term in the house.”

  “Too close an association with the Boat People?”

  “You got it.”

  “So that’s why your father dotes on your sister?”

  “Yep. Even though he hates the fact that she’s a vacuum cleaner, and I’m the whiz kid in the family.”

  “You’re being cruel again.”

  “Have you met my sister? I mean, she’s okay and all, but she’s barely eligible to be a cabinet member in one of the now-historic Bush administrations.”

  I smiled again. “I would have thought you’d be a Republican.”

  “Think, Lam boy, think. If Daddy is a big Republican contributor in Connecticut political circles, would little plum blossom Jon follow suit? Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “So you hate your father.”

  “Which has nothing to do with your half-assed investigation into the murder of Aunt Mary and Mom.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I can’t help you out at all.” He pushed his sandwich away, crumpled the napkin, looked around the room.

  “What did you think of your Aunt Mary?”

  He was surprised at the question. “You know, I never really gave her much thought. She’d be there—they’d all traipse over, the Benny Vu show—and I’d nod and leave the room. I’m sorry but I just don’t hang around with Vietnamese people. How can you respect people who speak in monosyllables—and at a pitch that can shatter a glass?”

  “But you went to prep school with Cindy and Tommy, your first cousins. Weren’t you friendly with them?”

  “We were together. That doesn’t mean we were friends.”

  “No socializing?”

  “A little. Of course. It was Chesterton, remember. I was a loner and had few friends—didn’t want any. So I sat with Cindy and Tommy. It was better than sobbing into my book locker.”

  “You didn’t like Cindy and Tommy?”

  “You know, Rick, you are pretty dense. You’re not picking up what I’m saying. I don’t like Asians that much.”

  “And you don’t like white people that much.”

  He grinned. “I just wanna be left alone. The only person I ever talked to was Mom, and now someone took that away from me.”

  “Why do you s
tay at home?”

  “Because I don’t have my own money. Daddy does. I stay there in the summer, but in a few days I’ll be back at Yale, happy as a Whiffenpoof on a nubile coed.”

  We lapsed into silence. I was getting bothered by his mannered smugness. He was putting on a show.

  He spoke first. “You know, if you want to see Dad’s handiwork first hand, look at Cindy and Tommy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve seen them, Benny the Banal’s progeny. Tommy, some punked out druggie with enough tattoos to qualify for membership in some Polynesian tribe. Cindy the New Age Lady Gaga clone, all feathers and exposed navel. Two great success stories that Daddy funded magnanimously.”

  “He wanted to give your cousins a good education at Chesterton.”

  “And it paid off. A dropout and a Disney cartoon character, Betty Boop meets Lady Gaga. What a waste of money. Dad just hurled those bucks left and right.”

  “Why?”

  A long pause. “Well, I guess because Mom asked him to. She always felt sorry for Tommy and Cindy, the poor church mice of the family. And you know the Vietnamese and their love of knowledge. Biet ro rang. I think that’s the phrase. It doesn’t matter. A love of learning. Study, study more, study till your eyes fall out. Hoc, hoc nua, hoc mai.”

  I smiled. “For someone who doesn’t like his people, you remember the language.”

  “Not really. Some phrases have been beaten into my overly bright cranium.”

  “So your father can be a generous man.”

  “So my father will keep peace in the family. He doesn’t like scenes, though he creates them all the time. One way of keeping people away from you is by throwing money at them.”

  “It works with you.”

  He smiled. “But some day I’ll own the well.”

  “So you resent your cousins for not becoming success stories. If they had, would you be happy?”

  “It’s the waste of money that bothers me.” He looked ready to leave, fidgeting in his chair, looking around, and drumming on the table. “I got to get back to my unpaid internship.” But he didn’t move. “You know, I never could satisfy Dad.” A heartbeat. “I’m a Yale grad, mind you. But he never really liked me, and I started wanting him to go away—back when I was a boy, in fact.”

  “What would you like to do, Jon?” I asked.

  He took the question very seriously, looking over my shoulder, pondering. “I’m still working on that. The models I’ve tried out—the ones I’ve inherited—just don’t cut it for me.”

  I thought of something. “Your father paid for Danny Trinh to go to school.”

  I saw color rise in his face, a flash of anger in the eyes, and the tightening of the lips. “Another person I truly hate.”

  “Danny?”

  “I hate him because he’s the family success story, and he’s not even family. Isn’t that ironic?”

  “What’s to hate about him?”

  “Have you met him?” The drumming on the table got louder.

  “Yes. Very impressive.”

  He made a fake chuckling sound. “Impressive, indeed. He comes out of dirt poverty, some Vietnamese working class struggling in public housing, but lucky enough to be the son of our housekeeper…”

  “But also bright and ambitious,” I interrupted.

  “That helps, especially in a world where no one else in the family seems to have more ambition than staying in bed, a la Tommy. You know, Danny is the son Dad always wished he’d had—handsome in some street-thug masculine way, athletic, charming, intelligent, a go-getter. One time Dad even joked that Danny is really his biological son, saying that in front of Mom and Susie and even Danny, and Mom starts to cry.”

  “Is it true?”

  “You’ve seen Danny. There isn’t a bit of Dad in him. My God, he looks like downtown Saigon.”

  “So that’s why you don’t like Danny?”

  “Of course. He made something of his life. It helps starting out poor.”

  “He did have an episode of drugs in prep school.”

  “You mean that stupid thing with Tommy? A couple of dime bags doesn’t translate into a drug problem, Rick Van Lam. It’s just that they got caught. Daddy took care of it, at least Danny’s end of it. But he gave Danny a warning. One more episode with the cops, and no dinero for scholarship boy. Danny knew which side his scholarship was buttered. He straightened up, became Mr. Prig, in fact, some horse’s-ass sermonizer like Cotton Mather. A Vietnamese Dale Carnegie—How to Succeed in Business by Learning to be Obnoxious with Daddy’s Money.”

  “You got a lot of resentments.”

  “Hey, I’ve earned them.”

  “You can’t blame Danny for taking advantage of opportunity.”

  He bit his lips. “True enough. But I had to hear all about it when Danny was in school and then, of all places, Harvard. In Dad’s mind Harvard is better than Yale.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s out of state, I guess. Dad’s sort of simple that way. So Danny comes back and is now a rising star at Bank of America.”

  “But that makes your father proud.”

  “It makes his mommy proud. She’s so grateful that she won’t leave Dad’s employ, even though Danny has demanded that she do so. Bankers don’t have maids for mothers. You see, Danny isn’t around much any more, now that he’s on his own. Sure, there’s the birthday gift for Dad and the Christmas gift of a box of cigars, but Danny has flown the coop, sort of.”

  “How does your father feel about that?”

  “It’s never come up in our conversations.”

  “Does he talk about Danny?”

  “Not while I’m in the room.”

  “That’s a smart-aleck response.”

  He smiled. “Haven’t you been listening? All of my remarks are sassy. You bring out the best in people.”

  I breathed in. “Who do you think killed your mom?”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “I don’t have a clue.”

  “No ideas?”

  “The only person who sometimes resented her was her sister, Mary. And she was already dead.”

  “So what happens to you?” I asked.

  “I stay at Yale for enough years to become student emeritus, then inherit Dad’s bucks, so my beautiful bride—bought with inherited money—and I can honeymoon on Maui.

  “Sounds to me like you have inherited your father’s values already.”

  He shook his head. “No need to be cruel, Rick.” He stood up. “Let’s not talk again.” He picked up his cell phone and walked away, leaving his tray on the table.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Late in the afternoon I sat in the Torcelli kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee while Susie polished silverware. I’d knocked on the back door when I’d discovered no one at home, but I already knew that. I’d made certain the house was empty. I knew Susie would be alone. “Mr. Larry is not home. Come back later.”

  I wanted to talk to her. “Maybe you can help me, Susie. I’m talking to anyone who knew Molly.”

  She let me in and immediately poured coffee.

  “I always polish the silver when I am sad,” she told me. “It helps me.”

  “These are sad days. For the family.”

  She stopped polishing the silver and wiped her hands. “What’s gonna happen to Mr. Larry and the children? Miss Molly, well, she was the—the heart of the family. Mr. Larry is like a ghost, walking around, not speaking.”

  I sipped the coffee. “Two sisters murdered.”

  She looked at me, fiercely, right into my eyes. “You have to get the answer, right? Isn’t that your job?” She had a thick accent, made heavier by her mood. “I cry and cry, and now I stop. Now I’m angry.”

  “But the police are stumped.”

  A dismissive sound broke from the back
of her throat. “Oh, the police. They don’t care. I know the police from when I lived in Hartford.”

  “But Molly is a rich woman, married to a prominent businessman….”

  She thought about that. “Well, maybe. When it was a simple drive-by, then they could say the people deserve it. But Mr. Larry tells me the police don’t know nothing. Nothing at all.” She got up, wiped her hands, and reached into a cupboard for some sugar cookies. “I make these. Try one. I bring them for the house but nobody got an appetite. Mr. Larry sits and cries, then talks to the wall.”

  I bit into one of the cookies, savored the bite of sugar, and nodded my approval. Susie was watching me.

  “So Molly had no enemies?”

  She sat back down. “What enemies? Her and Miss Mary. Two good women, they don’t bother no one.”

  “The big question is why they went to that dangerous square.”

  She threw her hands in the air and clicked her tongue. “I don’t know. Mr. Larry says to me, over and over—tell me, why did she leave the house? What did she say to you? What can I say? I do my job, I leave, I catch the bus. I’m home watching TV when I get a phone call. Miss Molly is dead. I still can’t believe it. How that man suffers now. How he needed her. A good, good man.”

  She went on extolling Larry’s virtues, his spirit, his generosity. The more I tried to steer the conversation back to Molly, the more Susie circled back to Larry as savior. I suppose it made sense, what with his mentoring of her son. While she respected Molly—“She no yell at me and always smiling at me, we go shopping together, like friends”—it was Larry who owned her unrelieved allegiance. “He is a great man, that Mr. Larry.”

  “What did you think of Mary?”

  “Very quiet. You know, I have trouble remembering her voice. Miss Molly did almost all the talking. It was like Miss Mary did not like the sound of her voice in these rooms. Like she didn’t feel she belonged here.”

  “But she was always welcome?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Miss Molly seemed, well, crazy to have her come here, not like to show off or anything but to have her around. I think Miss Molly got a little lonely sometimes, the kids off in their world, Mr. Larry working, working, working all the time at the dealership, coming home midnight and tired.”